The Numerical Algorithms Group has announced its IRIS Explorer Release 5.2 software is now available for Mac OS X — as long as you have X11 installed. IRIS Explorer is a scientific data visualization system that features a visual programming interface. It’s used by researchers in chemistry, physics and other disciplines to convert numerical data into different types of pictures, including 3D visualizations that can be manipulated in real-time.
IRIS Explorer runs on a variety of platforms besides Mac OS X with X11 — it also supports Windows, Linux, SGI, Sun, HP and IBM systems. The Mac OS X version depends on the X Window System — a graphical user interface developed for Unix systems. Apple makes X11 available as a free download for Mac OS X v10.3.x. And because it runs on multiple platforms, IRIS Explorer can be used by multiple researchers to share a “visualization pipeline” over a mixed-platform network. System requirements call for a G4 or better with OpenGL-compatible 3D graphics acceleration, 205MB hard disk space, Mac OS X v10.3.5 or later, and X11.